Thursday, December 1, 2011

Blog Sabbatical

Posted by
Mary L. Dudziak

Dear Readers,

Just over five years ago, I created the Legal History Blog one morning at my kitchen table. For the first three years or so, I blogged nearly every day. Since then, Dan Ernst, Karen Tani, and Tomiko Brown-Nagin have joined in, and we’ve had a long list of illustrious guests, with more on the way. With the help of Clara Altman, we are on Facebook. Collectively, we’ve written nearly 4600 posts. We’ve had almost 900,000 visits. 661 people currently follow the blog on Twitter, and an unknown number read us through email and RSS readers. Our readers are cross-generational and global (as I write, the past 100 visitors have included readers in Australia, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Germany, England, Argentina, Mexico and Canada).

My goal was to create a blog that is a cross between the Legal Theory Blog and History News Network – a blog that is about creating a space for legal history on the web, rather than a blog about my own musings. What kept the blog going in the early days, and what has sustained it over the years, has been our readers.

And now I hope you will forgive me for taking a break. Today I am beginning a blog sabbatical. I will be away for a while, but I promise to come back. My main goal while I’m on sabbatical will be to reassess the role of technology in my life (though I am not sure there’s a solution to my completely out of control email inbox...).

In the meantime, I will occasionally blog here, and since authors always have to take care of their own books, I will also be here. And I look forward to enjoying the Legal History Blog the way you do, as a reader. If you have a conference to announce or other news for the blog, please contact my co-bloggers, and please understand that we are not always able to answer all blog-related email.

There will be much great content on the blog for you during my sabbatical. If you read us in email, a reader, or on Facebook, please come by the actual blog as well. As we reach out through more platforms, our readership grows, but for our blog standings, only actual blog visits count. A concrete way to show your support for the efforts of my co-bloggers is simply to visit the blog often.